To mark the Huddersfield Examiner reaching the 50,000 edition milestone on Wednesday 9 August we are running a series of nostalgia features. Today we look at how the town centre transformed in the 1970s...

The town centre has seen many changes over the years, not all of which were welcomed.

In 1970 we waved goodbye to the old market hall and saw the opening of the new one.

The market hall in Huddersfield was opened in 1880 and demolished in 1970

The pages of the Examiner reflected optimism for the future but also nostalgia for the past.

In a piece on the Old Market Hall, Mildred Coldwell recalled visits to this “special place” with her dad.

Former Huddersfield Market Hall which was demolished in 1970

She remembered a blind man selling matches, buxom ladies selling boiled sweets and ragged old men warming by the pipes.

In a separate piece we reported that the new market was “light and airy” and “ultra-modern”.

A trolleybus trundles up Kirkgate past the imposing Palace Theatre in Huddersfield in 1948 long before the ring road was built

“Architecturally, the new Market Hall is one of the most interesting buildings to have been erected in Huddersfield for many years.

“When work began, the site was dominated by a huge crane, but there soon appeared strange, mushroom-like structures on the skyline around Ramsden Street.

Customers check out the new Market Hall

“What were they, people asked. Back came the answer – asymmetrical hyperbolic paraboloids. Not much the wiser, people watched as the giant mushrooms increased, until they seemed to be springing up all over the place.

“In fact, 21 concrete mushrooms were built...it was impossible to imagine what kind of a building could result from such strange objects.

“But people soon admitted that here was something new and exciting. Something of which to feel proud.”